Tag Archives: Dreaming Lore

Many think that Origine Lore, being an oral tradition, must be fallible…after all, how can [oral] truth be ‘held unbroken since the beginning’ when most people today can’t even keep ‘Chinese Whispers’ straight for more than three passes……….But what most don’t realise is that the stars, if you know how to read them [across the vault of heaven] actually hold all the creation lore, or Bootheram, as the Origine moieties call it…….and this knowledge of specific stars and constellations form vast celestial calendars which ‘remind us to remember’ important global events

One such global event is held in the oral traditions of the Bandjalang tribe of Evans Head on the east coast of New South Wales….it records a great war that took place between the matristic old world tribes [of the Feathered Serpent Traditions] battling patriarchal new world invaders who came from an area surrounding the Caspian Sea….these new world invaders travelled down to cripple the ancient tribes of northern India, pushing them to the south towards ancient Australia……

This war took place over 10,000 years ago…marking the beginning of the arrival of the ‘New World’ culture onto the southern continent of Australia after yet another global cataclysm had forced migration and evolutionary changes upon the planet….

This invading patriarchal culture would wage war over the matristic tribes of the northern hemisphere for thousands of years…with the only thing stopping them from completely invading Old World Australia being post cataclysmic sea level rise cutting Australia off from the northern land masses…thus preserving the Old World matristic Starlore culture.

The southern continent has held its ancestral matristic lore since the Alcheringa [the beginning of the Dreamtime]…several million years – and several ice-ages….during this time many invaders have arrived…..but this particular migration/invasion over 10,000 years ago served to successfully split the ancient Origine culture…creating a second wave of culture – patriarchal, with its own rites and ceremonies…and many matristic lands were appropriated by the ‘new’ arrivals…this wave of cultural anomalies can be identified in anthropological works of early academics …and thus, the wars of 10,000 years ago began forming the next phase of Australia’s Origine history….

History is always repeating itself, so first of all I should explain a little bit about the present ‘split of culture in this country’….Ok…so now you know that we have a pre-invasion cultural system that includes both ancient old world and ancient new world cultures [which I just explained occurred approximately 10,000 years ago] …But now, as a result of British invasion we also have a post-colonial invasion system overlayed onto that……and this British system is an exclusively patriarchal colonial system which only recognises and endorses the [relatively recent – new world] patriarchal Origine lore……completely omitting the matristic.

This exclusive patronage is less than 20 years old …it began 50 years ago with the need to administrate the survivors of the initial British invasion…but it has evolved, and presently [over the last 20 years] the government has created administrative systems which it calls ‘Aboriginal Nations’….

These aboriginal ‘nations’ first showed up after Native Title was won in the courts [ie; Origine peoples v’s the Commonwealth Government] back in the early 90’s…prior to this there were no nations in Origine lore.

Today these ‘nations’ systems control all aspects of the lives of the Origine peoples lifes….using apartheid processes, where-by one culture is relocated and used to take over and administrate the ancestral area of another…these are referred to as forced closures of Aboriginal communities – which dispossesses them from their ancestral lands and renders them refugees in centralised areas…..

These nation systems are linked to changing ancestral culture and language, which in turn changes geospatial place names on maps, which in turn changes who can prove [in a court] originally owns the land…….which cause lots of fights – and this then causes more administration to ‘step in’ to take control…..it’s all a vicious circle…

The Commonwealth was about to lose control of all the land after native title was proven, so by 1993 they commenced their solution…. an old tried and true method of the pen being mightier than the sword…it’s a post invasion methodology used all over the planet….

Conquer a country…make up a nation system to administrate them, force them to change the language, then change the maps to match, then use the new records to control administrative title of the land and water…Check it out and you’ll find it has occurred everywhere…..

Remember…..the aboriginal nation system was only created in the last 20 years…basically it’s a rework of the colonial administration legislation to combat the post civil rights success of aboriginal recognition…following orders from their own patriarchal governance systems in England …ironically this is the same process enacted on Britannia when their ancient tribes had been invaded by Rome……but they forgot to remember and have subsequently, and often, repeated the same mistake against the tribes of the colonies…….

The legacy of this process can be seen in relation to the Bandjalang Tribe [as distinct from the Bundjalung nation]….the Bandjalang are a tribe, or family kinship group of the old world moiety systems that existed before colonial invasion….

The Bandjalang peoples fight for recognition took them over 17 years during which time they went to great pains to oppose the government from referring to them as being part of the ‘new’ Bundjalung Nation system … Faithfully maintaining their cultural integrity [as a Tribe] proved successful for the Bandjalang people……

To Date, no native title claimants who have identified themselves as a member of the Bundjalung Nation, or any aboriginal nation has achieved Federal Determination in a commonwealth court….instead claimants have only conceded to be party to State Indigenous Land Use Agreements, or ILUA’s, which extinguish Native Title …..

So the Bandjalang tribe winning federal determination was a double edged sword….for despite beating the government in court, the Australian government still refuses to publicly acknowledge them in their own right and instead only endorses ‘nation’ cedes …

This same pattern of exclusion occurs to any other Origine group that has achieved federal court success, such as the Githabal….With any group who refuses to identify and be conformed into the nation system ending up being buried in a clandestine quagmire…..ancient cultures forced into assimilating with administrative nations systems or be damned to receive no assistance….meanwhile, to the world the nation system is being promote globally as the purported ‘truth….the rest of the planet totally unaware that it’s happening…..it’s a hidden apartheid..

Needless to say all this aboriginal nation system propaganda creates lots of surreptitious opportunities for corporate exploitation of land, waters, flora, fauna and people…. and it’s ongoing…destroying our Barrier Reef…polluting our ground water reserves…causing extinction of species…..mining uranium….tapping gas…devastating remnant forest….and occurring against the will of all Australian people excluded by the apartheid administration….

But…let’s get back to India and the war in the centre of the earth…..and the central island which sank and the pre-colonial matristic lineages, or Feathered Serpent Traditions of Australia…..

Several recordings of Bootheram lore outlining the war in the centre of the earth were made…initially by first colonial researchers in the late 1800’s….many of those records have been systematically eradicated in sanitised historical rewrites, funded during “the Ministry of the Arts” political portfolios of the mid 2000’s when the aboriginal nations system was being developed and widely promoted……..any librarian or who opposed the alterations was sacked…any individual, ostracised. …….leaving only one independently published work from the early 1950’s which recorded and preserved the Bootheram….hiding it, not in historical records, but in poetry……

This Bootheram was collected in 1957 by an Australian poet named Roland Edward Robinson during the lead up to the Civil Rights campaigns of 60’s…..the Origine people at that time were denied having legal status of being human….to amend this they chose to tell their sacred Bootheram to trusted supporters…to people like Roland Robinson, who was helping them prove they had their own traditional lore and culture and deserved civil rights recognition and protection….Civil rights only happened in Australia in 1967…less than 50 years ago…

…..During an interview in 1973 Robertson stated ‘I think that I have received more comfort, more enlightenment, more religion, and poetry from the Aborigines, than from any of the wise books of the white man’…….and I certainly have to agree with him…

Bootheram and the Matristic Starlore explains creation and connection of all biological life through combining science and doctrine to achieve sustainability….true caring for country…as opposed to the present biblical law which forms the basis of land tenure legislation for the planet causing entropic chaos globally…

But, before there was patriarchal law, there was Matristic Lore….Matristic linages follow stars and migrate seasonally….the vault of the stars can be read and they can’t be changed, unlike man-man books….The Origine peoples call their ancient matristic lore ‘Bootheram’ and the beautiful thing is it matches the Indian Vedas, the Tamil and the Sanskrit Matsya Purana……also epic poetic works…..

During a meeting I had with an Indian astrophysicist in 2007 we were both astounded to find the correlations between the ancestral Australian Origine knowledge and the ancient Indian culture….with shared knowledge of a central land mass that had sunk beneath the oceans…and Indian cave art with no decipherable meaning , which also matched Origine

We spoke at length about the marriage systems and the cast systems, both based on the stars…and we also realised that both cultures knew about a war in the centre of the earth that had pushed old world ‘hairy man’ survivors to the south and isolated them in Australia during an ancient invasion of the lands we now know as India…….We shared knowledge of how this had occurred when a numerous and aggressive northern army from up near what is now the Caspian Sea waged war against the old world cultures….My astrophysicist friend was astounded to learn that a culture outside of India still retained the same knowledge…and it went back not just 10,000 years, or 15,000 years, but millions of years……all the way back to the Alcheringa….

Of Course current academics have been studying the genetic linkages between the Australian Origine peoples and the Indian….but these studies centre on the patriarchal lineages….whilst it is the matristic that records the ancient hairy genome and how [and why] it is linked to the marriage lore star cycles.

Unfortunately, the exclusive endorsement of the patriarchal cultures has brought much undue prejudice against the matristic lineages….causing patriarchal cultures to get all precious and superior about matristic bloodlines and ‘hairy-men’…….So it’s important to remember that northern hemisphere Neanderthals were hairy too – but died out [or were destroyed] approx. 40,000 years ago in Europe – and just like the Australian hairy lineages, they’d evolved to survive ice ages…

My own research on Matristic Starlore found the India Australia link to be supported by Bootheram traditions of migrations arriving to Australia occurring over several epochs…not just one…..with the common global link being the celestial deities spiralling from the south celestial stars, cyclically ….most all the global remnants of this old world lore has been usurped by the patriarchal, save the matristic lineages in Australia..

Unlike the patriarchal cultures, the matristic moieties [which is mitochondrial or MtDNA breeding – based on star cycles] can trace its bloodlines back millions of years and retains knowledge of events during those ancient times because of the constancy of the stars…including knowledge of ice ages and hairy people…

Currently the ‘Hairyman’ is being featured on Australian television in a new series called Cleverman…and though promoted as mythological it is in fact drawing heavily from reality……..ART imitates Life…

One academic, Professor Alan Cooper, from the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Ancient DNA, says the Indian influence may well have played a role in the development of the Aboriginal culture – outlined in a paper titled ‘Genome-wide data substantiate Holocene gene flow from India to Australia’.

Professor Cooper says it is impossible to ignore the link with the discovery of the dingo…….”The timing of all those things in the archaeological record, about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, happens to match the timing estimated for this genetic influx from India,” he said…

I, myself, have found the matristic lore of Dogs following the tribes as well as the Starlore of the two heavenly dogs [or dingos] who ‘guard’ the marriage cycle in the stars can be found in many global cultures, including the Anubis of Egypt, or Kemet…and that the Kemet were regularly trading with east Australian tribes several thousand years ago…and with India….

Professor Cooper also points to another development that happened around the time of the Australia Indian connection – a big expansion of one of the Aboriginal language groups…

“This other language seems to have taken over Australia relatively recently – perhaps 5,000 years ago,” he said……”And how it did it, how it replaced the other ancient languages, we don’t know……..”So suddenly, 4,000 to 5,000 years ago is starting to become a fairly tumultuous time in Australian history.”……he says.

Yes….they have used this assimilation formula again and again… change the language, and change the maps to match the imported language [or attribute the name on the map to the newly created nation in the geographical records], and thereby retain control and title of the land and water……..

There are 3300 year old maps in the Museum of Cairo with Australia clearly identified on them….and hieroglyphs which use Origine southern hemisphere Starlore deities on the pyramids and tombs…..there are even Egyptian tombs in Australia [the Gosford Glyphs]…all sanitised out of His-story or, like the ‘Hairy-man’ linages, excluded….

Perhaps if the Bootheram Lore of the Carpet-snake clan matristic lineages wasn’t so stealthily buried we would understand more about our past, our present, and most importantly, how to survive the future….

“We know so little about Australian human legacy, and yet it’s perhaps one of the longest continuous occupations of any human cultural group in the world,” Professor Cooper said …….“It’s one of the most rich and challenging stories in human history, and we know almost nothing about it.”………..

Some academics did and still do try to negotiate the labyrinth of sanctioned historical records…in the past so few of them thought to just ask the Origine elders…. Currently, in Australia, all academics are required to adhere to ‘memorandum of understanding’ contracts which exist between government education facilities and government created nations…no concurrence – no degree….resulting in no matristic lore being allowed to be identified let alone included.

Anthropology is a contentious field of study and Thomas Henry Huxley was by far the most influential early European thinker about human origins……. Champion of Darwin’s theory of evolution, as a young man Huxley visited Australia on the HMS Rattlesnake in 1847, 11 years after Darwin came here on the HMS Beagle………While he showed little interest in anthropology at the time, he would subsequently go on to found human evolution science and strongly shape Darwin’s ideas about our origins.

Hindostan is an historical region of India considered at various times to include only the upper Ganges River Plateau, or all of northern India from the Himalaya mountains to the Deccan Plateau and from the Punjab to Assam….which also coincides with the area referred in matristic Bootheram Lore as ‘the centre of the earth’….Kailash…..with portions of Bootheram describing a central island area linking Australia to India…and a ‘sacred spring’….

This in turn coincides with the Kumari Kandam legends of the central land mass depicted in the ancient Tamal and Sanskrit Matsya Purana texts linking to a great southern island…….. and, in these texts they describe the movement of the earth mass, called ‘Navalam Theevu’ in Tamil, which caused the formation of the present continent of India….and severed Australia from the north…

The present formations of India, Arabia, Africa, Antarctica, South America and Australia started breaking up due to natural upheavals and moving to different parts of the earth at the rate of 15,000 years per mile on an average and found their places in the Asian Continent….which makes these ancient lore’s VERY old….

Also aligned with Origine matristic Starlore, the Rig Vedic Myths are symbolic expressions of astronomical phenomena, both of lunar asterisms and solar movements…and they are linking them to geological movements; again, the same as Origine Bootheram – as above so below

”Kumari Kandam”, the land that lay to the south of India and, which later submerged in the Indian Ocean, has been a matter of conjecture for many scholars…..but few of them realise [yet] that Australian Origine Starlore is recording the other side of the ancient Indian story..

“Because of a calamity, which took place in 9,000 BC, a terrific destruction occurred and destroyed Chera, Chola and Pandiya Kingdoms and they all then came and settled in South India. The great scholar Sri Avvai Duraisamy Pillai has established that the “Pancha Dravidam” is the region consisting Gujarath, Maharashtra, Andhra, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu”.

“This is the time to write the correct history of Tamil Nadu. In “Irayanar Agapporul” (Nakkeerar Urai) it is mentioned that 72 Pandiya Kings had ruled Tamil Nadu (which was inclusive of the destroyed Kumari Kandam) from 30,000 B.C. to 16,000 B.C. (i.e. for 14,000 years)”.

“Eastern Island, 1,000 miles near Japan, has a script called Rongo Rongo and it is identical with Mohenjo-daro letters. This has been fixed as 1,00,000 years old”…

Mohenjo-daro [Mound of the Dead Men] is an archaeological site in the province of Sindh, Pakistan…Built around 2500BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley and one of the worlds earliest major urban settlements contemporaneous with the civilisations of ancient Mesopotamia, Minoa, Chorte Chico and Egypt…with Egypt trading with east coast Origine moieties during these times….

All this global academic speculation includes every continent, except one… AUSTRALIA – the most ancient land on earth…..

The suppression of the lore by Australian authorities systems denies the matristic Bootheram to be brought to the attention of the masses and unified with the work of international academics……one has to ask why not?….is it in order to retain control – by suppressing matristic language and changing maps to retain tenure that allows the earth to be raped..?….

Australia is the missing link in this old world history and vital to decoding its meaning ….because our ancestral Bootheram has a very important function…It reminds us to remember, and teaches us how to be sustainable over long timeframes….but if we are denied access to learn from the true records of our past, then we, as a planet, are doomed to blindly repeat the problems…..

Anyway…here is one of the Bootheram’s describing the sunken island and the ancient war in the centre of the earth …it was collected and published by a roustabout [cowboy] from Coonamble, named Roland Robinson, who would collect and publish many Bootheram from tribes all over Australia under the protective guise of poetry, which before the common man learnt to read and write was the way oral history was retained and faithfully passed….

This particular Bootheram is called The Sacred Spring….It’s celestial matristic Starlore that is using metaphoric symbolism to describe geological and climate events – as above so below – and it is loaded with time marker clues that match many described in the Indian texts which record their lands being invaded from the north and the ‘old world’ being pushed to the south, towards Australia….

Robinson collected this Bootheram in 1953, from a Mr Ken Gordon, who was an elder of the Bandjalang tribe, from the time before patriarchal ‘aboriginal nations’ were ever created…..it’s called ‘The Sacred Spring’ and its describing an epoch when the earth had a different equator to the one it has now, which I’ll tell you about in another blog…so if you would like to hear more, please subscribe…it’s free and will be emailed direct to you…Hoo Roo……

The Sacred Spring –

“This story is a Budgeram [sic]. When the old people said Budgeram they meant “Away back from the beginning’. In the beginning of the world there were three people…

There was Ngudjungulli [sic]…. Buloogan and Guangun…..

Ngudjungulli is the boss of the whole world…he never dies.

Buloogan and Gaungan, they both died.

Buloogan was the most handsome man in the whole world.

Gaungan was the most beautiful woman in the whole world.

Buloogan died, but he is supposed to come back some day.

He’s above all these wee-uns, the cleverfellers.

From the beginning this land was one whole land from here to India.

The Aborigines used to go over and fight the Indians and come back again….the old people said that the people they fought had a kind of turban thing slip off and you’d see their long hair fall down backwards.

There was a sacred spring in Queensland…..No one was allowed to go near it.

Once, when the aborigines wanted to go over to India to fight, there was one man who had two wives. He didn’t want his wives to follow him to India…so he took his nulla nulla and half killed them both. Then he went over an left those women behind.

When the man were gone, those two women put their heads together…”Now, we’ll go to the sacred spring”, they said.

Well, they took their yam sticks to that sacred spring. From the spring, one went digging this way and one went digging that way…”We’ll keep going till we meet one another”, they said….as they dug the water from the spring followed them. Where they met, one water goes this way and the other water goes the other way…it is the roughest water in the world.

Well, these aborigines finished their war over on the other side…They started on their way back…when they got along a bit they saw just one mass of water.

This Buloogan was with them. He made the mountains and islands rise out of the water…Then, with their ‘borror’, the string that they pull out of their mouths, the clever-fellers took this cord and threw it from island to island…They crossed over this cord until they landed back in Australia.

As soon as they came back they knew what had happened…

They blamed that man for beating up his two wives….

These warriors came across those two women talking at the Australian Bight…One of the wee-un’s, the clever-fellers, turned those women into stone…After that the aborigines lost touch with the outside world…They never went back fighting any more…

On the east coast of Australia’s most easterly point are two ancient volcanoes…..The Tweed Volcano and the Focal Peak Volcano…… Green jewels in the crown of the UNESCO World Heritage listed Australian East Coast Gondwana Rainforest Reserves….A remnant sliver of lush emerald rainforest on one of the oldest, driest desert continents on this planet…

The Tweed and Focal Peak volcanoes are the ancestral homeland estates of two very ancient Origine tribes, who have been on this land ever since the ‘Alcheringa’ – which in their dialect translates as “the beginning”……And unlike many other Origine tribes lore’s of creation, which usually involve migration and arrival to the vast southern island, this particular lineage have a very different ancestry….with their tradition’s lore’s and custom’s descending from the Carpetsnake Clan lineages …arguable one of the most ancient lineages on earth…

The respective names of these two ancient tribes are the Ngarakbal and the Githabal, and they are actually not tribes, but Marriage Moieties… Their lore say’s they did not come here across the sea……They say they were always here…. since the Dreamtime…..and their creation lore’s say they were made here…by the Sky-Ancestors….way back in the Dreaming….

The term “Moiety” means half…and their marriage moiety kinship, or ‘Skin Lore’ system can be explained in this way…..

Ngarakbal are one half ….Githabal the other….and just as every human on this planet required a mother and a father to come into existence, so too the ancestral Ngarakbal Githabal marriage moieties follow this natural lore which flows down from the celestial realm…from the stars….so [naturally] their totemic kinship system operates in accordance with star cycles, which are indisputably the greatest calendar system governing our known reality.

Following the rhythmic pentagram star cycles of our universe, the Rainbow Serpent, Grandmother [All-Mother] and Seven Sisters traditions define and govern the Skin Lore’s, recording changes in environment and climate and providing priceless information in regards feast and famine…..increase and decrease…..Vital information that allows not only for survival of the moiety but also how to assist the surrounding natural biodiversity to thrive and survive solar cycles…

Totemic allocation defines each individual’s responsibilities within their respective ancestral estate….so that everyone learns to care for and increase their totem species for the greater good of the moiety members to share at harvest…..

Their Skin Lore system also defines correct marriage and, like any contract, the Skin marriage system facilitate seasonal reciprocal access rights to travel and harvest adjoining moieties ancestral estates….the marriage system also ensure optimal health of the moiety…by breeding out weakness – creating strong genetic bloodlines of mitochondrial DNA lineages which are arranged into totemic subgroups….each moiety having many totemic subgroups within its ancestral area….with no individuals of aligned subgroup ever being allowed to marry…over many generations this Skinlore system is effective in minimising birth defects and eradicating disease

To achieve this symbiotic harmony between people and environment requires very strict protocols…..again, all governed by the star cycles….and this is how the Origine culture survived for so long unbroken…

The Ngarakbal ancestral estate, the Tweed Volcano, has been known as ‘Grandmother Country’ ever since the Alcheringa – the beginning – the dreaming …… along with the Githabal ancestral estate, the Focal Peak volcano, being perpetually known as ‘Grandfather Country’….

The Alcheringa is a physical place – the highest waterfall on the escarpment’s linking the two volcanoes….Water being the binary element of their Rainbow Serpent Lore….The Ngarakbal and Githabal call the Serpent, Warrazum, who created the land…nightly the creation journey can be read, just like a book, in the heavens above their volcano’s…travelling across the skies with the Grandmother [All-Mother], the Seven Sisters and the Grandfather and his son……with kangaroo’s and dogs, rivers and trees…..all travelling together.

Written in the stars and mirrored on the land….Feminine, masculine, negative, positive, above and below, the Ngarakbal Githabal moieties and their antediluvian culture elegantly defines the connections of all life on this planet through their Dreamtime lore’s of creation….For them humans are not the supreme species, but a branch on the tree of life in which all life is connected and mutually dependant…Starlore …gifted from the Sky Heroes……Linking everything through the waters…with all the creation deities displayed across the milky way….

Contemporary science [of 2016] can now show us that almost every element on earth was formed at the heart of a star; including water, and all life which developed from it…even us…The Ngarakbal and Githabal Dreamtime Lore explains exactly this in eloquent loveliness…..explaining super nova explosions that effect our earth- in metaphor….for the greatest expansion of life this planet has ever know was caused by stars…….these natural lore’s are facts of evolutionary creation….linking everything together in what anthropologists call Matristic Lore systems.

Matristic Lore systems recognise and revere both the masculine and the feminine of all life forms and the origins of all life from the stars ….The term Matristic describes nomadic tribes that lived and cultivated huge interlinked estates and moved together following seasonal migrations of herds, while at the same time harvesting established food forest landscapes of fruits, seeds, tubers, fish, birds and animals across these vast estates…..with access rights being governed by the marriage skin lore’s….

These annual migrations usually involves a travelling trinity….being a herd, followed by a tribe, being followed by dogs, or in some continents it was cats….in Australia this is Kangaroo herds, followed by the moieties, being followed by dingoes – travelling through forests of trees……in the America’s it was Bison, Indians and Coyotes travelling through forests …in Europe and Asia it was Reindeer and wolves travelling though forests…Africa and south America had the big cats instead of the dogs…..but this matristic patterning and the masculine, feminine, tree and [water] serpent icons associated with it can be identified in ancient cultures across the globe…and all pre-patriarchal, which is the law system we live under now.

Equality – Unity…naturally and harmoniously…..in accordance with celestial lore, recording and heralding cosmic creation events which mean life or death for our world…..And, as in the case of many global nations, Matristic lore cycles were also revered…with cosmic events remembered in magnificent temples and pyramids….or, as in Australia, the Living Land [which is created by the stars] was preserved much as the biblical Eden….naturally and unmolested….with djurebil [sacred sites] of significant geological formations respected and their creation process sung…recounting the essence of how they were brought into being because of the forces of the planetary Sky Heroes….

When one is aware of the nuances within the Dreamtime’s Astrotheological principals, of all life and form being created by the mythical SkyHeroes, one quickly understands that Origine cosmology is actually explaining the classic sciences in myth and metaphor…..Sciences like astronomy, hydrology, geology, physics, biology, astrophysics, etc., and how all life is created through the interaction of these natural lore principals….using universal concepts to do so – from a time before writing…..male, female, trees and serpents….from the Alcheringa…..which appear to have morphed into what we now know as the old testament bible stories – including the Adam and Eve story…..with the most beautiful thing being that these Astrotheological deities can actually be seen in the celestial skies of the southern hemisphere…. known as the Eelemarni Dreaming – a bootheram about marriage lore deities Leho and Leva or Kumbarra and Burigan – these astotheological forms appear specifically above the most eastern land of the Australian continent, Byron Bay, at Winter Solstice in the ancestral Origine estates of the Ngarakbal, and travel west across the sky into the estates of the Githabul…..depicting “a marriage made in heaven”…..this ancient lore was recorded in an award winning short film called “Eelemarni” by Lorraine Mafi Williams and featuring Githabal Elder , Mrs Millie Boyd

Since the systematic conquering of the ancient tribes of earth by patriarchal Rome, and the replacement of those cultures with biblical doctrine, which is the first book of Land Tenure Law, the methodical elimination of Matristic Culture has been enacted all over the world…..Matristic knowledge once known to the whole planet literally slipped [back] below the horizon into the southern realm of the Grandmother leaving many metaphysical questions to secrets unanswered and ancient monuments un-deciphered..

The North, being unable to see to below the southern hemispheres Tropic of Capricorn slowly forgot about the SkyHeroes and the marriage [star] lore they enshrine….. Northern survivors fell into amnesia…their communal lands appropriated and claimed using biblical legislation – which are exactly the same land tenure laws global governments’ still use today.

Rome’s patriarchal legislation created the ‘Rule of Law’ regarding the tenure of the lands that were conquered and assimilated by Rome across the northern hemisphere…of which ancient Britain, Australia’s legislative ‘mother land’, was one…..

Basically the maxim of possession [of land and chattels] is awarded as “first in time, first in law” ….and seeing as no ‘first’ written law existed in those ancient times, Rome wrote one…. allowing lands to be acquired and retained by [stealthy] administration…. thereby overthrowing all indigenous tribal tenure everywhere… And anyone who resisted was eliminated..

1,800 years later when the first invasion missionaries enacting the Rule of Law tenure process over Australia arrived in the south, bringing the ‘truth’ to the ancient volcano moieties by ushering in their exclusively patriarchal law system, they forced the people to renounce their language along with their Origine Astrotheology and its volcano cosmology and obey the [Roman] doctrines which had excised the All-mother and the sacred marriage between the masculine and feminine centuries before….. Those missionaries were delighted at how quickly the Origine people took on the word of God – Our Father who art in Heaven – Unlike the Origine peoples they were completely unaware that the tribal peoples could see his celestial form rise above the great southern island

Today many denigrate the Origine peoples claiming they have denounced their own culture and replaced it with the bible….which the initiated in star lore know is not true…

That the Origine peoples can see the Astrotheological Sky Hero deities recorded in the old testament spiralling out of the south celestial pole – in annual cycles…. encompassing the full Matristic Lore which commences with the All-Mother, that Rome excised from the bible thousands of years ago, travelling west with the All-Father to sink down in the heavens onto the oldest land on this planet ….3600 million year old Marble Bar in Western Australia ….geologically it is the first land to emerge from the sea – just as the old testament records in Genesis … The point being that they didn’t allow the missionaries to replace the Origine culture at all…they actually concurred…

The irony of all this being that contemporary patriarchal governance’s own common law maxim [derived from the bible] outlining “right of possession”, being the first in order of time shall prevail, is perfectly preserved in the timelessness of Matristic Starlore for all the indigenous cultures of the earth…..For though Roman law can re-write a book, destroy a library, change the names on a map, or assimilate a tribe, it will never, ever, be able to erase the stars… they were there first…

For more information on Matristic Starlore please visit my blog at stellawheildon.com.au ……….. And if you would like to receive more of my posts then join my newsletter [its free] and they will be emailed to you direct…. Hoo Roo

Within the binary cosmology linking all life into the Matristic Rainbow Serpent lore is the element of water.

For the Australian Origine peoples there are five waters…the salt, the fresh, the sky [rain], the earth [ground water aquifers] and then the fifth is the vast biological sea that runs through all of life on this planet which is seen as the sacred marriage between spirit and matter and refereed to within the culture as ‘clever water’ , for everything on this blue planet is linked through the biological sea …. It is the spiritual and physical relationship with all life forms…..every souls totemic birthright and obligation….and these lores come down from the stars.

The Matristic Rainbow Serpent Lore commences on the east coast and rises in the heavens above the ancestral volcano landscapes of the Ngarakbal and Githabul moieties…..These two moieties are ancient marriage clans…Ngarakbal – Tweed Volcano – Grandmother landscape and Githabul – Focal Peak Volcano – Grandfather landscape …….From the terrestrial union of these two volcano’s flows the longest strongest river in Australia….The Murray Darling ….flowing all the way to the South Australian Bight.

This ancient water serpent lore is the basis of the Dreamtime culture of the celestial marriage lores for all the matristic moieties surviving on the continent ….linking everyone to everything through the ‘clever waters’……..all life contains these ‘clever waters’…..tree’s, bird’s, animal’s, fish, people….and through these waters all are equal…the only thing separating us is our shape which the Origine peoples refer to as ‘Skin’……Everything has skin, or form….every life form filled with water, thus we are all interrelated; for we are all just ‘clever water’….

All interrelationships, including marriage, is determined by grand celestial star cycles which govern all biological process of life upon the planet ……In Australia, the driest land on the earth, the element of water and the consciousness of aligning it with all life force is an intrinsic facet of the matristic lore’s kinship and ‘skin’ linkages and the foundational element of all spirituality and healing…..with all of life being given equal status as individual species on the tree of life ever form is seen as a brother or sister – living in harmony with all of existence …observing natural rules of reciprocity and obligation as it was since the Dreaming…….. These lores are written in the stars and etched into the vast southern continent…living lore, both celestially and terrestrially, in accordance with natural cycles and sequences….As above – so below

Right now these ancient matristic truths are at risk of being extinguished and assimilated into the patriarchal governance systems that administrate our entire planet….the same systems handed down from Rome….the same systems that systematically crushed and appropriated every matristic society from the past.

The last remaining flame of the Matristic Lore is the Australian Origine Lore of the Ngarakbal Githabul moieties…..a lore that is arguably the oldest unbroken culture on earth…..the lore of the Rainbow Serpent .

All lore of the Australian Origine Dreamtime culture descends from the Stars through the Matristic lineages .

The Matristic lineages are the original Dreamtime linages whose traditional lore’s and customs depict the creation lore of the Sky Ancestors, who made them.

These traditions are distinct as being a Matristic Dreamtime epoch and follow strict kinship and Skinlore codes. They are very ancient. Arguably the oldest living lore on the planet. Many global cultures refer to their own matristic epochs as the Sacred Feminine…..In Australia, as the last conquered continent, the Matristic culture still survives, albeit under duress….

Global Matristic culture is then followed by a Patriarchal epoch whose traditional customary lore’s commence with a migration story of people arriving in the southern continent. They are far less ancient and many of the ancestral sacred sites of the Patriarchal lineages were inherited by right of occupation. These traditions have distinct traditions and customs as well and similar Skinlore marriage lore codes

Invasion and occupation of the continent by Colonialists commenced in the 1770, rendering over 300 distinct ancestral ‘countries’, each with their own lore’s, languages and ancestral boundaries conquered with all Origine survivors contained and homogenised as just one race collectively labelled as Aboriginal irrespective of their epoch, ancestral county or kinship skin classifications. This dispossession occurred right across the continent. Ensuing assimilation processes caused further confusion and today the greater global population is unaware of the two epoch lineages, or of the original 300 plus individual counties that once made up the Great Southern Island.

The Matristic lore is metaphorical of creation. It commences in the cosmos, with associated rites, rituals and ceremonies singing the creation of the galaxies, our solar system, our planet and all life upon the planet. Each Sky Ancestors celestial journeys spirals across the celestial skies of our local Milky Way galaxy and project as a holographic reflection of the creation down onto the landscape. As above so below.

Since the Alcheringa, which in the ancestral dialect of the Ngarakbal Githabal moiety means “the beginning”, the lore commences with an ancestral All Mother in the heavens, who appears out of the eastern seas of the most geographically eastern point of the Australian continent, and is terrestrially embodied as the Tweed Volcano Caldera, traditionally the estate of the Ngarakbul Githabul Origine moieties.

The Tweed Volcano Caldera marks the terrestrial ancestral motherland of which the natural lore of which the Grandmother, the Rainbow Serpent and the Seven Sisters radiates in fractal waves following the transits and cycles of the stars which govern all cycles of life on the planet.

In a world changing now more than ever it is time to reconsider the ancestral lores and weigh them against the incumbent patriarchal lores which presently rule the planet….there is much we can learn from the past.

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To achieve Civil Rights recognition in 1967, the Ngarakbal Githabal Elders told their stories….some of the stories were ancestral Lore Bootheram, and some of the stories were historical parables about what had happened in the invasion wars….But all of these stories were vitally important in bringing about unity…and through unity, success…

….“The Invasion of the Northern Rivers of NSW by Europeans began in earnest in 1821 when the Penal settlement of Port Macquarie was established on the Hastings River…In later years cedar getters arrived and harvested cedar apart from the Penal Settlement”….N.C. Keates.”Wollumbin”…………..

The ‘accepted history’ books tell us that the Tweed / Gold Coast environs were established in the mid 1840’s….The first Cedar getters [wood cutters] were claimed to have arrived by boat in 1844…commencing the indiscriminate ‘clear fell’ denuding of the Gondwana Super Forest from the Brunswick River, just North of Byron Bay…However, the oral traditions of the indigenous Aboriginal people tell of this lands invasion beginning well before the 1830’s…The first white skinned invaders they say also arrived by sail boat long before Cook claimed the country for the crown…. contrary to the contemporary history presented by Australian authorities the traditional Aboriginal people tell of a prior arrival of the Spanish in the 1500’s coming to Byron Bay……..but, this has been eradicated from the authorised historical records….prior arrival in Australia would nullify the Crowns claim of Terra Nullus as unoccupied lands….and this is not a popular political option…..

The authorised histories also tell us that John Oxley had discovered the entrance of the Tweed River and sailed into the Tweed Caldera on his Northern voyage (1823) scouting for a suitable penal colony location, but the treacherous Tweed bar, the density of the Caldera jungle and the numerous (200+) angry natives was not ‘conducive’ to a fledgling settlement and so he pushed North to Moreton Bay/Brisbane…and here in 1824 they built the northern jail colony – to operate simultaneously to the southern Port Macquarie settlement

Now, both of these penal colonies were established by British soldiers who had served in the Napoleonic wars – mercenaries…..and scrutiny of the authorised academic records, and the more elusive ships logs, shows these invading mercenaries used classic Roman ‘pincer’ strategy to invade the Yoocum Yoocum ancestral lands……Advancing simultaneously from both the northern and southern penal colonies….pushing upriver, into the mountains….the goal was trapping everyone in the middle…thus, the brutal invasion of the Yoocum Yoocum – ‘Bird Tribe’ lands began…..

The northern Invading forces pushed West, South West from Brisbane…And, at the same time, in the South another group of soldier mercenaries were rampaging West, North West, traveling upwards into the mountains, advancing via the southern flows …

1843 by Surveyor Finch recorded one of the first publicly released detailed maps of the area known as Moreton Bay to Port Macquarie…

The two Rivers they followed were the Northern Logan/Brisbane and the Southern Clarence…These rivers come from the one source – The Condamine Catchment of the Murray Darling River complex – which to the ancestral Yoocum Yoocum moieties is ‘Rainbow Serpent Dreaming’…The mercenary invaders followed the rivers (like roads) to the headwaters…. massacring many along the way….

Thousands of traditional owners fled into the safety of the Tweed Caldera highland escarpments…traditional site of creation lore of the Rainbow Serpent Bootheram [Dreaming]…high volcanic jungle….

satellite image of the Tweed volcano caldera

Carved by the waters…ringed by the rivers…for the traditional peoples fleeing from the terror of (never seen) guns the Tweed Caldera was a strategic point of survival because of its rugged topography…… and blessed with an abundance of resources….a natural fortress…..

Over Twenty [undocumented] years the initial invasion war’s raged in the Yoocum Yoocum lands …and, like the sanitised maps, these years were cleaned from the authorised histories….but, despite the cover-up campaigns, the oral histories of the survivors recount how the invaders continued to come…like invading ants … lusting for land and the red gold of Cedar wood – later followed by the Gold-diggers establishing the first gold fields behind the lush volcanic lands…despite the reprisals of the Traditional people the invaders continued to come………. “Savage Ants” – the oral metaphor for the numbers and ferocity at which they attacked the ancestral peoples…

Here is one account from Mr. Alex Vesper, who was one of the Ngarakbal Githabal Elders that had been removed from his ancestral country and sent to Stony Gully Aboriginal Reserve near Kyogle….Mr Vesper was later sent to Mulli Mulli Aboriginal Station when the Stony Gully Reserve was revoked by the authorities… Along with the other survivors of his people he was given no rights of recognition as a Human being…so, Mr Vesper, with his fellow elders, rallied his people to overcome the divisions that the ‘invaders’ had so skilfully manipulated…bringing all the people together to lobby as one….dropping ‘old grievances’ and working together they brought about the Civil Rights recognition of the people in 1967…These people are heroes that authorities refuse to acknowledge……..Over-coming manipulation, putting aside self-interests and working together for a positive outcome, together….

To achieve their monumental success the Elders told their stories….some of the stories were ancestral Lore, and some of the stories were historical parables about what had happened to their lands, lore and language by succumbing to the divide and conquer mechanism of the invaders manipulations, in the past…..

In the following account, called ‘The Attack on Tabulam’, Mr Alex Vesper relates an historical event about a Mr Ogilvie who was a Squatter that established a sheep grazing station in the ancestral lands of the Yoocum Yoocum ….Now, this is a landscape that had seen many invasions and has had a long history of inter-tribal warfare as a result…

The Squatters, which were exactly as the name implies – illegal occupiers, quickly figured out the inter-tribal dynamics and would manipulate the ancestral tribes – drawing on the ‘Old scores’ – setting one tribe against another …text-book ‘divide and conquer’ mechanisms…the Squatters led the tribes to attack one another – and do so willingly on behalf of the Squatters…unfortunately, little did the ancestral peoples realise what they were being led to do….and so, Mr Vesper told this story to remind everyone to work together during the decade of the Civil Rights campaigns……forget ‘old scores’, stay unified, and succeed

Alex Vesper – in the centre

The Attack at Tabulam – by Mr Alex Vesper

………….”The shooting of the Aborigines in Ogilvie’s time was the beginning of fear in the Aborigine and a terrifying of him which eventually drove him from his tribal life and place. It happened about 1835.

Ogilvie started a grazing station at Baryulgil, and the area of his grazing even came as far as the southerly part of Tabulam. He had sheep grazing on the area, and it was reported to him that his sheep were being killed. He came up to the place where the sheep-killing had been reported. He blamed the aborigines for killing the sheep instead of blaming the dingoes. He got aboriginal and white stockmen from Grafton and they gathered to attack the tribe at Tabulam.

Through the night, they prepared to surround the camp of the aborigines and to attack at dawn to get everybody unawares.

So, when the aborigines at Tabulam knew that they were going to be attacked, they were warned by their divine powers. They also prepared.

They told their women and old men to pack up and go up Rocky Creek to the mountainous country at a place they call Bull-Dog. All the clever-fellers, the Wee-uns, were left with the war-faring aborigines to await the attack.

The clever-fellers, the Wee-uns, said, “We’ll wait until they attack the camp and then we’ll see who has the power. The bullets will not hurt us. We’ll stop them with our magic power.”

So they waited. Of course, the aborigines who were affiliated with Ogilvie thought with delight how they would have the women of the Tabulam men after the camp was attacked. That was the custom of the aborigines, to take such women back to their own camp.

Well, on the morning of the attack, Ogilvie and his stockmen surrounded the camp while it was still dark. The Tabulam aborigines had kept fires going in the camp all night. Apple-wood was the notable wood used, it would burn all night.

Just at dawn the attackers had the camp surrounded. The Tabulam men were painted up, they were painted white, waiting for the attack. They were singing their sacred songs in order to paralyse the gun-power.

At daybreak the attackers sang out to the camp, “Hoy! Hoy!” The white painted aborigines came out of the camp and the attackers had them surrounded with their guns.

Then Ogilvie and his men said, “Will you surrender?”

The Tabulam aborigines said, “We won’t surrender, but if any of us get shot in the legs or arms, we’ll finish you. You’ll pay the penalty.” But Ogilvie and his men pulled out their guns and started firing.

The Tabulam aborigines never flinched. Their sacred songs had paralysed the guns. The bullets were deflected, and half the guns never went off.

The Tabulam aborigines called out, “Look out if you hit any of us, you’ll pay the penalty.”

So, when one of the Tabulam blokes who wasn’t so clever was hit in the arm, he sang out in the language, “I am hit!”

“All right,” said the Tabulam clever-fellers. “That’s good enough.”

Then one of the Wee-uns, the clever-fellers, pulled out a spear and speared the white man, who had shot the Tabulam man, through the heart.

Ogilvie, when he saw this, threw up his arms and cried, “That’s enough! That’ll do now!” He surrendered, and all his mate surrendered.

Then the Tabulam Aborigines sang out, “We Jabilum! We Jabilum!” and stamped on the ground. This meant, “We belong to this place. We are the originals!”

“Hello,” Ogilvie said, “we’re friends now!” And he told his aborigines to make friends. The Tabulam aborigines said that since Ogilvie had surrendered they would make peace.

They buried the man who was speared. Then, afterwards, Ogilvie invited the ‘Jabilum’ men down to Baryulgil. The aborigines explained that the sheep had never been taken by them. They had no need to kill sheep, they had plenty of food of their own, possum, duck, fish, wallabies and yams. They told the white men that it was a bad report that they had been killing the sheep.

And Ogilvie quite admitted, by surrendering and making peace, that he was wrong. And the tomb of the man who was speared is there to this day at Tabulam……”………Mr Alex Vesper – recorded by Roland Robinson in 1966.

The use of parables to illustrate collective visions is nothing new….His-story has used it to grand effect to validate the appropriation of tribal nations globally…

The stories of the Yoocum Yoocum Elders brought about unity, and through that unity recognition….by looking deeply into the strengths and the weaknesses of the people, and moving forward together……..It’s important to remind ourselves that we are all wanting a better world to “grow up the future”……so, here’s a nice reminder of what the future is about….enjoy…

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There is a global mythology of Feathered Serpents throughout ancient tribal nations….and as the last great continent to be invaded, Australia’s original people hold the least corrupted of the ancestral lore….The most eastern extremity of the Australian Continent is the ancestral country of the Ngarakbal Githabal people, who refer to themselves as “Bird Tribes”…Their ancient traditional Lores and Customs are a rich repository of metaphoric lore of creation…..

Feathered Dinosaurs – Bird Ancestors

The Ngarakbal Githabal people are direct descendants of the ancient Carpet-snake clans – “Bird Tribes”, or Feathered Serpent Traditions…..

Their totems and ceremonies bear witness to true and factual evolutionary creation sequences,and their lores and traditions travel through the landscape, climbing four ancient volcano’s, into the bordering ancestral lands of the Wakka Wakka peoples of the Bunya Mountains.

The oldest known Australian marsupial fossils are from a 55 million year old, Early Eocene site at Murgon in southern Queensland, in the Bunya Mountains volcano lands of the Wakka Wakka people. This site has produced a range of marsupial fossils, many with strong South American connections…..and South America also has a rich mythology of Feathered Serpents.

In 1987 the Murgon site also produced an isolated tooth that is thought to from a condylarth, which has been named Tingamarra porterorum…….Condylarths are an ancient group of placental mammals know from various other regions of the world, and the presence of Tingamarra in Australia indicates that placentals were indeed present there at the time when the continent broke away from Antarctica. The world’s oldest fossil bat was also found at the Murgon site…..Very old marsupial fossils have been found on other continents, most notably, North America and Asia.

The Bootheram [Dreaming Lore] of the Ngarakbal Githabal says that “the first bird flew from the Bunya Mountains”……and that Bird was the “Kirra”….the White Cockatoo….There is a coastal beach village on the New South Wales Queensland border, in Ngakakbal Githabal country…and if you follow the ridge from Kirra beach, all the way up the Macpherson Ranges and continue following it up and up, you come to the Bunya Mountains volcano, where all the ancestral totems are being uncovered from the ancient Gondwanan landscape…….right where the ancestral Bootheram Lore has always know them to be.

Here’s a short clip that explain’s a little more of the Feathered Serpent Lore of the Ngarakbal Githabal peoples…..the Bird Tribes of Australia…..enjoy

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Ancient Australian creation myths of the Rainbow Serpent can be traced both in art and oral narration, the myths differ slightly from one region to another. However, all the stories share a common thread; the fundamental role of water in nature’s cycle of growth and regeneration. Fertility, drought and flood are all aspects of nature that resonate with the human condition, and all are inextricably linked to that precious commodity.

The mythology of the Rainbow Serpent plays an important part in the harmonious coming together of different Aboriginal clans. All of the elements of cultural life played a role in helping to maintain peaceful coexistence between clans, and respect for both the natural environment and mankind, with its complex history and customs.

The story of the Rainbow Serpent, with its emphasis on the preciousness of water to the cycle of life, is very relevant in today’s climate. With rapid climate change impelling us to look closely at the way we relate to each other and to the environment, both now and into the future, this ancient myth is a reminder of our inheritance, our purpose and perhaps even our duty.

The Rainbow Serpent is a video clip from the documentary series and website First Australians produced in 2008 by Blackfella Films for SBS Television. First Australians chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia as never told before, from the perspective of its first people. First Australians explores what unfolds when the oldest living culture in the world is overrun by the world’s greatest empire……enjoy this small extract.

Cooooeeeee……Video and Audio formatting of Ngarakbal Githabal ancestral Lore is something I will be using extensively in the near future……after all its ORAL Lore…..so, if you would like to receive my posts automatically then subscribe to my newsletter [its free] and they will be automatically sent to your email……………Hoo Roo

The Ngarakbal Githabal peoples are part of the once vast ‘Yoocum Yoocum’ Moiety….. These ancient peoples are the East Coast ‘Custodians’ of the Feathered Serpent Traditions [or, Bird Tribe Lore] which is intrinsically linked to The Seven Sister ‘Skin’ Lore of the Rainbow Serpent…..the most ancient religion on the planet

The Yoocum Yoocum are the large ‘Cultural Block’ of one of the most densely populated regions of the Australian Continent before invasion by the Crown… and, despite the aggressive invasion of the East Coast, the ancestral lore survived….it’s a wonderful thing that it did, for these people hold ancient lore that is the last piece of the puzzle to unifying many of the ancient global mysteries.

The Ngarakbal Githabal peoples are descendants of the “Carpet-snake clans” of Australia…..Their Carpet-snake [water-snake] Lore traditions and culture come from the ‘Alcheringa’ – the distant ancient ‘Dreamtime’ past….These traditions once traversed the island continent….the origin of the Rainbow Serpent Lore

The Rainbow Serpent is a most important Ancestral Being within the Yoocum Yoocum and associated aligned moieties across Australia…It governs every facet of their ‘Skin’ Marriage Lore’s of Creation and Fertility – the spiral of Birth, Death and Rebirth….Their Central Spirituality governing the ‘Cycles of all Life’…The Rainbow Serpent is intrinsically interwoven with the ‘Skin’ Marriage Lore of the Seven Sisters – Arguably the oldest Religion on the Planet…

The Lore’s begin with landscape creator journeys from the coast of the Wollumbin Caldera – the most easterly point of the ancient Australian continent – and the Lores come from the ‘Alcheringa’….This word – ‘Alcheringa’, and the Rainbow Serpent Lore, and the Seven Sisters, feature in the regional dialects of other ancestral estates across the continent….but, these traditions are not in every Aboriginal culture….Some have been replaced due to ancient invasions and wars of the distant past – They have different beliefs – creators, ancestors and cultural values – the same as different religions have spread around the planet throughout time….

The Alcheringa [Lore] once travelled right across Australia…It has been recorded as part of ‘skin’ marriage lore in several ancestral regions, including the eastern cultural blocks of the Wakka Wakka, the Gubbi Gubbi, the central New South Wales Komilaroi, and also the Urabunna and Arunta peoples in the red centre of the continent…There are also regions of the west coast moieties in the Pilbara – but the Alcheringa is certainly not limited to just these…as with all ancestral Lore, within each specific ancestral estate and with each ones specific language, the sacred sites to commemorate the ancestors creation journey are maintained and utilised by the ‘custodial’ clans…joining the creation ‘songs’ together, much like pearls on a necklace, makes the ‘songline’….and many of these ‘songlines’ are governed by celestial bodies – the transits of stars.

The east coast in Ngarakbal Githabal country is the beginning of the Alcheringa – marked by a ‘djurebil’ [sacred site] that is located high in the rainforest mountains, in the aquifer watershed of the two east coast volcano’s…This djurebil [sacred site] was created by the Carpet Snake Clan ancestors….the Carpet-snake clans are the oldest clan on the continent…the ancient ones….

The Alcheringa creation ‘songline’ travels from ancient geological sites now submerged beneath the waves of the eastern Pacific Ocean – from the distant past when the sea water was locked in ice and the land extended out much farther than it does today ….but the djurebil remains…and weaves to the west – as serpents do…it is the pathway of the Rainbow Serpent ancestor, making the water paths within the geological features as it travels….

Big Bootheram on the left [background] and little Bootheram, snaking up on the right [foreground]Rainforest ridges, Mountains in their own right, once named ‘little’ and ‘big’ Buggram [Bootheram] are divided by a deep gorge that the Rainbow Serpent gouged on its journey…after creating Little and Big Bootheram it travels up – higher than Wollumbin [Mount Warning] – higher than Julgumboong [Mount Lindsay]…it creates a great Plateau “Dhungura-ngarian”, which the white man named Lamington Plateau and traveling on to Mount Worendo, where it creates a series of waterfall cascades that plunge down through the rainforest…it is there, high in the remote rugged Macpherson Ranges, of the Caldera’s rim that the highest waterfall is created…and it’s djuriebil name is ‘Alcheringa’….and it is the name of that waterfall still….

Alcheringa Falls – Lamington National Park

The Ancestral totemic ‘beings’ not only created the geological features and aquifer systems of the continent, but also carried and distributed objects which were the sources of ritual and tribal Lore as well as the sources of all forms of life, including the people themselves….

In the Bootheram of the ‘Alcheringa’ there exists a comparatively small number of individuals who were half human and half animal or half plant…The Ngarakbal Githabal say that these ancestors didn’t ‘come here’ but that they were ‘made here’…that they are the original Carpet-snake Clan’s…The Bootheram records them as being created by ‘God’- Babbarra is one Ngarakbal Githabal word for describing God …Duramulan is another…….

Bootheram teaches that these half-human creatures were endowed with far greater powers than any living men or women now possess. They could walk about either on the earth or beneath it and could fly through the air….They were the children of ‘God’ and had inherited a portion of the qualities of their creator…they were themselves as ‘demi-gods’…and these ‘demi-gods’ are the ancestors of the existing totemic clans ….’Family’…Ancestors… Nimbinje as the Ngarakbal Githabal call them – or the “Hairy fellas”…the original clans – Carpet-snake totemic clans – they went all over the country, creating the djurebil…making them with sacred ceremonies, songs and dances for the people to enact throughout time….

Rainbow Serpent Djurebil site

The creation ancestors, in the act of ‘creating’, would leave deposits in the ground or in some natural feature such as a rock or a water pool, which transformed the site into a djurebil…and, high on the escarpment between the two volcano lands is one such carn of boulders, which was ‘made’ by the Rainbow Serpent…and, it is in this same area that the ‘Eelemarni Marriage Lore’ is deified…joining Ngarakbal to Githabal……All Bootheram Lores link together

So, what is Bootheram?

Bootheram is the Ngarakbal Githabal dialect name for the Dreamtime LORE…or LAW of all creation…Its Spiritual, complex and parallels numerous scientific disciplines

Northern hemisphere peoples (recently) developed numerical & alphabetical values to explain time and creation of this galaxy, this solar system and this planet…Bootheram explains the same thing…

Bootheram uses plants and animals and creation Heroes and Heroines metaphorically to denote each timeframe, for each creation sequence [epoch] and ‘holds’ it orally…through ceremonial songs, dances and sacred ritual at djurebil sites

Bootheram uses the landscape and the sky as the reference points of this creation lore….a living library…written into the land and mirrored in the sky, for all to see….indelible native science held in oral format…..And it is the Lore that Bootheram must NEVER be changed…

The sum total of the Bootheram of the Ngarakbal Githabal Feathered Serpent Traditions tells the complete history of the creation of the ‘universe’ beginning with 8 culture hero’s….It is obviously metaphoric and [naturally] linked to Bird Tribe Lore…..so, let’s look at one of the metaphoric Ancestral Creator Birds…..

Bootheram has many layers of meaning…and one such layer depicts (dreaming) timeframes…Oral lore for chronological markers of ‘Bird Tribe’ Mythology events….or, Totem as a Timeline……For example….One of the Landscape creation ancestors is the Turkey – ‘Woggun’ means Bush Turkey in Ngarakbal Githabal …and Woggun the Creation Ancestor Turkeys name is ‘Wollumbin’….

So…..In 1977 as part of the National Parks and Wildlife Aboriginal Site Survey of NSW, Ngarakbal Githabal ‘custodial knowledge holder’ Mrs Millie Boyd recorded the significance of Mt Warning with Howard Creamer, Anthropologist …Mrs Boyd had learnt this Feathered Serpent Lore from her Mother Charlotte Williams [nee Brown] …..Aunty Millie related the Bootheram [unchanged] of the Totemic Ancestral Birds gathering to ‘learn the lingo’ [Language]…..Then all flying from Mount Brown [which is located in the Richmond Range of Northern NSW]……….All the Birds fly from Mount Brown to claim, settle and name the ancestral tribal Totem sites in the ancient Yoocum Yoocum Landscape…….

“Turkey Flew to Mount Warning…’….Mrs Millie Boyd

Ok…so what’s the Metaphor of Feathered Serpents?

“….The birds are the Feathered Serpents, the descendants of the Goanna beings; and we are the descendants of the Bird Tribes who also come from this Bootheram… The Birds gave us our lore, land and language…. We are the Bird Tribes….”…..….Marlene Boyd – Ngarakbal Githabal – grand-daughter of Charlotte Williams…

When the Bootheram was being recorded western science hadn’t discovered that birds evolved out of dinosaurs….this has only come to light in the last decade….But the Ngarakbal Githabal descendants knew….they have always know…they ARE the Bird Tribe…..

Here is one of their Bootheram Lore’s from the Lamington Plateau of the Macpherson Ranges, which the Ngarakbal Githabal call “Dhungura-ngarian”…it was broadcast on radio in 1968 and published the same year….the ‘custodian’ relating this Bootheram was Mr James Morgan – who was another 1967 civil rights campaign “Hero of the people”….Like all the Bootheram, it sounds like a nice little story about animals…but it has profound layers….There are djurebil sites all around the ranges that were created by the ancestral Carpet -snake Clans to mark this important Bootheram…for this is the story of the first Corroboree ring….the very first one…it is a sacred story, and it must NEVER be changed

……..”In the time which is Bootharrum or the dreamtime there lived a pelican who played on a plateau.

The name of the plateau was Dhungura-ngarian, which means “where the Pelican Played”. The corroboree ring of the pelican was on the plateau of Dhungura-ngarian……”……

…”In the Bootharrum all the birds were the same colour but one day they decided that it would be much better if they were not all the same, so they painted themselves in different colours. From that time they have kept the colours they painted themselves on the plateau of Dhugura-ngarian…”..

“…The Crow painted himself black….The paint that he used was made from burnt bark of the Bloodwood tree”….

….”The parrots adorned themselves with bright paints of many colours. And all the birds chose the colours they liked best. Then the birds gathered together for a corroboree on the plateau of Dhungura-ngarian….”….

….”One day, Old Man Pelican, who was very fat, was walking away from the corroboree ring when he heard someone laughing.

“He turned around to see who was laughing and saw that it was the crow…”…

“…The crow was laughing at him, laughing at the way he walked because he was so fat….”…

….”Because the crow had laughed at him Old Man Pelican picked up a piece of the dullong and threw it at the Crow…..”…..

….”The piece of clay hit the Crow in the eye and to this day the white in the eye of the crow can be seen where Old Man Pelican hit him……”

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The Ngarakbal Githabal are the ancestral aboriginal people of the most easterly land on the Australian continent….a landscape protected by their ancestral spirits…one such spirit is ‘Ineroogun’ – the Black Dog of Fingal Heads….

The ‘accepted history’ books tell us that the Tweed / Gold Coast environs were established by the colonialists in the mid 1840’s…. this is a sanitised pro-crown ‘His’-storical view…..

The first Cedar getters [wood cutters] were claimed to have arrived by boat in 1844…commencing the indiscriminate ‘clear fell’ denuding of the Gondwana Super Forest from the Brunswick River, just North of Byron Bay and throughout the Tweed Caldera…However the oral traditions of the Ngarakbal Githabal indigenous Aboriginal people tell of this lands invasion beginning well before the 1830’s…The first white skinned invaders they say also arrived by sail boat…. but contrary to the contemporary history presented by government, the traditional Aboriginal people – the Ngarakbal Githabal- tell of a prior arrival of the Spanish in the 1500’s coming to Byron Bay and Fingal Heads…All pre-crown arrival has been eradicated from the authorised historical records… a prior arrival in Australia would nullify the Crowns claim of Terra Nullus as unoccupied lands….and this is not a popular political option…

Anyway, over one hundred years after the Portuguese-Spanish arrived, the first Dutchman to get to Australia was Willem Janszoon aka Jansz in 1606…… Not much is known about his early years, other than he was born in 1570, but what we do know is that he served the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which was a chartered company established in 1602 to carry out colonial activities in Asia……. In 1603, he became captain of the Duyfken, which means ‘Little Dove’, and it was aboard this ship that he first sighted Australia while searching for outlets of trade near New Guinea…… Once he crossed the Arafura Sea, he travelled west and landed on the western coast of Cape York just near Weipa…possibly, following charts that had been captured from the Spanish

Jansz started to chart the area, thinking that the land was still New Guinea, but after finding nothing but swampy land and violent encounters with Aborigines, he decided to throw in the towel and return to Indonesia…..He called ‘his’ new found land ‘Nieu Zeland’, but the name didn’t stick and was used by Abel Tasman about 40 years later for New Zealand…which is located off the eastern coast of Australia.mmmmm……..Now, Aboriginal Elders are insistent that two Spanish landings took place in the ancestral coastal lands of the Ngarakbal Githabal people, on the east coast of Australia…One at Byron Bay and another at Fingal Heads…..Both are purported to be Spanish Shipwrecks which occurred at Suffolk Park south of Byron Bay, and on Cook Island, situated just off Fingal Headland

Fingal Headland is a beautiful place…its known as “Mynjung Booning”……… “Mynjung”, which is the Ngarakbal Githabal word for ‘place of’; and “Booning”, which means Echidna …Place of the Echidna…… Fingal’s precise location is Latitude -28.199042, Longitude 153.571315

Separating the Tweed River from the Pacific Ocean, Fingal is a narrow peninsula several kilometres long. It ends at the mouth of the Tweed river and on the opposite bank lies Queensland. . The peninsula north of Fingal village is known as Letitia Spit, a sand spit that has been slowly accreting due mainly to the construction of the river’s southern training wall – from rock quarried from Fingal

Aboriginal associations stretch well back into the dreamtime with anthropologists claiming that the area supported one of the densest nomadic populations to occur anywhere in the world. Skeletal remains of people estimated to have been around seven feet tall have been found on the Peninsula….

In contemporary times Fingal has been referenced as “Pooning”…most notably in the crowns geospatial lands records for LAW, Land and Language are linked…..and the ancestral people understand that for its the same in traditional Lore – Lore, Land and Language are linked – but, the crown chooses to only recognise the name ”P[b]ooning” for Fingal….[the ‘P’ and ‘B’ sounds blurr together when enunciated…]…..

”P[b]ooning” is the Ngarakbal Githabal name for the Echidna, or Australian porcupine…and the word P[b]ooning is attributed to Fingal Headland because of the rock formations that occur on the headland…. Spectacular basalt columns that resemble the spines of an echidna, and, the ancestral Ngarakbal Githabal people believe that the spirit of the echidna inhabits these headlands…Burleigh Heads located to the north also has similar formations and is also traditionally referred to as being a “Mynjung” [Place of] “P[b]ooning” to the Ngarakbal Githabal…and several other sites that this rock formation occurs in are too.

Anyway……There used to be a large cave at Fingal, but it was blown up to form the break-walls of the Tweed River ….. For the Ngarakbal Githabal the cave site is the ‘dreaming home’ of a protective [supernatural] hairy man said to abide in that cave on Fingal Head and also a giant black dog whose story is linked to the creation of the McPherson Range…but the crown chooses NOT to recognise these ancestral Lores or that the Ngarakbal Githabal totemic ancestral name for Fingal is ‘Inneroogun’ – the Black Dog…..said to now roam the area, homeless….since the Cave was destroyed

The columnar basalt lava flow at Fingal Headland extends underwater to Cook Island (named after Lieutenant James Cook who explored the east coast of Australia in 1770)…… The lava is thought to have come from the prehistoric Tweed Volcano and is known as “Lismore Basalt”; predominantly tholeiitic with occasional alkaline types…….. This unit is stratigraphically equivalent to the Beechmount Basalt in Queensland – west of the Lamington Plateau….which is also refered to by the Ngarakbal Githabal as being a “Mynjung” [Place of] “P[b]ooning”……

Now,…I need to include all this historical and geological stuff in order to explain how the Ngarakbal Githabal Bootheram Lore, Land and Language are linked, to geospatial lands records….and thus, land tenure.

The jointing, clearly evident at Fingal Head is caused by contraction: as lava cools from the outside toward the centre, shrinkage cracks develop, usually forming hexagonal patterns (the shape of the columns is attributed to tensional stress). These columns are vertical because the lava cools from top to bottom when the flow of lava is horizontal

Just before the turn of the century, the Department of Public Works blasted and quarried the massive basalt caves of Fingal Head….and in the process they desecrated the ‘djuribil’ [sacred site] of the Ngarakbal Githabal……. During the1950’s and 60’s sand miners cleared and destroyed not only most of the littoral rainforest which blanketed Letitia Spit but also numerous burial sites, including at least one of the former massacre sites.

All of this destruction occurred during the crown occupation process when the ancestral peoples were being systematically relocated to policed reserves…moving them further and further from their ancestral lands….and due to their legal status as being Flora and Fauna up until the success of the Civil Rights ratification in1967, the blood-line to country descendants of the ancestral people of Fingal have remained dispossessed….however, their Bootheram [Dreaming] Lore survived and was even used to save the Fingal area from massive development…which I’m getting too…

Fingal has historically been coveted as a beachside development site since early occupation but has always managed to remain protected…This protection was largely because of the Ngarakbal Githabal Aboriginal recording the totemic significance of the area and having their language embedded into the geospatial lands records by the crowns first Surveyor’s under order of the old Queen, Victoria.. …Lore Land and Language are linked, so the surveyors used Ngarakbal Githabal language on the original maps…..but, since the advent of Native Title in Australia, the crown is none too happy that the ancestral dialects of the ancestral people are on the geospatial records [the maps]…seemingly because the language attribution [of Ngarakbal Githabal] is the evidentiary material required to claim Native Title ….so, it’s much simpler for them to reclassify it to Bundjalung…change the language classification changes the tenure….it’s an old formula applied globally….

Anyway…back to Fingal…..Throughout the seventies the residential community of Fingal continued to make land claims over Letitia Spit despite the fact that they had no legislative basis on which to rely….. None of these claims were successful [ the residential community not being of the ancestral bloodline of Ngarakbal Githabal country]…Then, after the introduction of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1983, the residential community linked together with other local groups to form the Tweed Byron Local Aboriginal Land Council and immediately lodged new claims over the Spit as well as other pieces of Crown land at Fingal……as a government entity the Aboriginal Lands Council were able to circumvent the non-bloodline prerequisite – write new laws that enabled development …So, In 1986, the Aboriginal lands Council and the Department of Lands negotiated ‘a deal’ in respect of the Spit……The residential community agreed to withdraw all but a small portion of their original claim in return for the Department instituting a Plan of Management over the remainder, aimed at ensuring the land’s protection for future public use….To their credit, the Local Aboriginal Land Council went to some expense in preparing its submission on the Plan of Management…… However, once the claim was withdrawn the Department refused to proceed, and instead commenced researching potential development options…..Of note is that over the subsequent decades several fresh land claims have been made, and like the initial claims, none of which have included the Ngarakbal Githabal…and; subsequently, none of the claims were successful…..since then, the geospatial records linguistic attributions have seemingly been stealthily and steadily changed to Bundjalung….

Developers, Ocean Blue Club Resorts Pty. Ltd., posed the first big threat to Fingal They negotiated ‘a deal’ with ‘the department’….planned to build an international hotel on an important dreaming site and remnant littoral rainforest, a luxury marina on a protected wetland area, and a 400 townhouse /condominium complex in place of the existing village. Both the hotel and marina site were Crown Land and zoned as either public open space or for environmental protection….. At the same time, the Public Works Department commenced a feasibility study into the possibility of cutting a new entrance to the Tweed River through Letitia Spit to make a “Super Harbour”…. If approved, the Department intended to pay for the construction work by selling the remainder of the Spit to private developers…… One firm, Adco Constructions Pty Ltd expressed interest in acquiring the land and put forward proposals for around one billion dollars’ worth of tourist and residential developments….. Such intensive development was considered necessary to absorb the sixty million dollar cost of river works.

In order to prevent development of their ancestral djurebil [sacred site] the Aboriginal Lands Council contacted the Ngarakbal Githabal knowledge holders for help…they needed the ancestral Bootheram Lore to save Fingal…..

Now;….The first pro-aboriginal recordings of the Aboriginal significance of the area were made in 1950’s by Mildred Norledge from Kyogle – endorsed by Professor Elkin…She recorded the Ngarakbal Githabal Bootheram from Elders such as Mr James Morgan; Dyraaba Tribe – west of Lamington Plateau…and Mr. Joe Coolhum; Mebbini Tribe – Tweed Heads…These two gentlemen had spoken about their ancestral custodial Lore as their intrinsic contribution to the Civil Rights Campaigns to free their people from the crowns ‘non-human’ status…..They are two more of the Ngarakbal Githabal ancestor Heroes who showed the crown, through their Bootheram, that they did indeed have their own cultural ‘religion, and did not deserve to be legally classified as Flora and Fauna…

The next wave of recordings commenced in the late 1970’s by Anthropologist Howard Creamer for the National Parks and Wildlife Service Aboriginal Site Survey Team…Howard was instructed to identify ancestral knowledge holders within the community…one of the Cultural Elders whom he interviewed was Mrs Milli Boyd of Woodenbong, who was the daughter of Mrs Charlotte Williams [nee Brown] as part of the governments Aboriginal Site Survey Team of National Parks and Wildlife Services…….This information was then used to obtain further interviews of Mrs Milli Boyd [nee Williams]….principally Dr. Margaret Gummow [building upon the work of Anthropologist, Howard Creamer and Linguist, Margaret Sharpe]….This cultural evidence was then used by the Tweed Byron Aboriginal Lands Council to launch legal action, and a subsequent corruption investigation, in regards development at Fingal Heads…

And these are the cases in which the Ngarakbal Githabal ancestral cultural information was used….Tweed Byron Local Aboriginal Land Council v The Minister Administering the Crown Lands (Consolidation) Act and the Western Lands Act & Ors [1990] NSWLEC 67 (19 June 1990)…and TWEED BYRON LOCAL ABORIGINAL LAND COUNCIL v. THE MINISTER ADMINISTERING THE CROWN LANDS ACT [1995] NSWLEC 220 (14 December 1995)…… “By Notice of Motion filed in Court on 23 October 1995, the Tweed Shire Council seeks to be joined in pending Class 3 proceedings involving a number of land claims made by the Applicant pursuant to the Aboriginal Lands Rights Act 1983 (the Act) at various times between 4 January 1988 and 27 March 1992, in respect of various parcels of land having an aggregated area of some 300 hectares situate on the coast line at Fingal in the Shire of Tweed near the New South Wales-Queensland border”…..

……“The Independent Commission against Corruption [ICAC] has yet to release its report and has so far made no findings, but the evidence presented to it has graced the front pages of the metropolitan newspapers for months. Evidence before ICAC revealed that Ocean Blue had paid large secret donations to both the Labor and National parties at times when, as the respective Governments of the day, they were considering Ocean Blue’s application for Crown land at Fingal. The Administrator of the Tweed Byron Local Aboriginal Land Council alleged that an officer of Ocean Blue had attempted to bribe him into furthering the company’s interests. Lawyers from the Department of Lands claimed that they were misled in leasing the quarry site to the wrong company and both Wal Murray and Ian Causley declared that, had they known what they do now about Ocean Blue, they would have refused to deal with them. Whether or not the Ministers were in fact aware of the donation is an issue on which the ICAC has still to make a finding”….Andrew Chalk

And it was the Ngarakbal Githabal ancestral cultural information which won the case…..and Lore was recorded in LAW….

…..“To my knowledge, there are four recordings of this [Mt Warning] song in existence, all performed by Boyd. The first was recorded by Howard Creamer of the NPWS as part of a project concerning aboriginal site protection. I recorded the second performance in 1985 in relation to my PhD research on Bundjalung and Gidabal songs [Gummow 1992]. The Linguist Margaret Sharpe recorded the third performance in 1989 in connection with a project funded by Aboriginal Legal Aid concerning the environmental impact of land and land rights at Fingal Head. The Fourth was recorded on video in the early 1980’s by Lorraine Mafi Williams. In an attempt to preserve traditional material, Mafi-Williams produced the film Eelarmarni [sic] in 1988, which featured Boyd explaining some of the mythology and singing several songs from the area.”…[Gummow;1985;7A Barwick-Marett-Tuntill 1995:121-131; Tweed Byron Aboriginal lands Council v Tweed Shire Council v the Minister for Crown Lands; and the ICAC INVESTIGATION into North Coast Land Development ]

The following information is based on recordings made in 1989 by Sharpe, speaking with Mrs Milli Boyd [nee Williams] who had learnt the Ngarakbal Githabal Bootheram Lore’s from her Elders… It comprises part of the mythology of the area [Sharpe 1989].

Mount Warning is the shape of a Turkey’s head, and according to Aboriginal people in the area a spirit being called Wollumbin, a wild turkey, lives inside the mountain. Wollumbin owned two dogs, one male and one female, which are associated with Mount Warning and Fingal Head…..One day the dogs were chasing a kangaroo along a ridge. They chased him from Fingal Heads over to Boonah near Beaudesert in Queensland. They eventually came to water and the dogs drank than lay on the bank. Two young girls from a nearby camp came to get water, saw the dogs, and went back to the camp to bring more people down to the river. After spearing the two dogs, they put them on a pole and began cooking them over a fire…….Wollumbin had followed the dogs and knew they had been killed. He flew down onto the flat where the dogs were being cooked and caused a wild storm. The people left to find shelter from the storm. Wollumbin took the dogs off the fire, wrapped them in bark and carried them back to Mount Warning. As he flew across the country, parts of the dogs’ bodies dropped onto the ground below and formed part of the landscape. He went back to Mt Warning and placed the dog’s bones in the water. One dog was placed in the Tweed River near Mt Warning and the other was placed at Fingal Head. It is believed that their spirits protect the Ngarakbal Githabal people in this area from strangers…..Today, at the Tweed River, Ngarakbal Githabal people can hear the dogs bones creaking….

The two Ngarakbal Githabal gentlemen, Mr. Joe Coolham; Mebbini Tribe – Tweed Heads and Mr James Moran; Dyraaba Tribe, told their ancestral Bootheram Lore respectively……. of the Two Dogs, Burrajahee and Ineroogun…. and DHUNGURA NGARIAN which in Ngarakbal Githabal is the name of the Pelican Dancing Ground…. Bootheram Lore must never been changed…it cannot be transferred or claimed by another….for it tells the Lore of their ancestral estate, and within it, embodies traditional morals and values for the people to follow…

The first Lore is “DON’T BE GREEDY”…the story of Burrajahee and Ineroogun teaches that Lore….. To claim or steal a Lore opens it up to corruption and contamination…and, unsurprisingly, that is exactly what unfolded………..

……”As always there is a good deal more to the story. The best parts – the intrigue and maneuvering, the anguish and joy, and above all the people – are most wisely kept for late nights around a fire on Dreamtime Beach, where, well out of earshot of the defamation lawyers, a group will be sitting waiting for the snapper to bite. They will be remembering and they will be laughing, because in 1989 they all did something which they didn’t really think was possible….”…..Andrew Chalk – in regards to the Aboriginal Lands Council court case….

To this date the Ngarakbal Githabal descendants have never been recognized or included in the governance of their ancestral estate by the crown systems….Their culture continues to be appropriated and twisted by those who do not understand the Bootheram and its teachings…the ignorance of the current system thrives on greed, but, the ancestral ‘djurebil’ protection of the Black Dog is indelible, and it’s been written into LAW….

If you would like to read Joe Calhum’s Bootheram of the Two Dogs – you will find it on my website at this address….and if you would like to receive more of these blogs then subscribe to my newsletter [its free] and you will automatically receive them in your email…..Hoo Roo

The ‘Song of the Vine’….The Battle of Wollumbin.

As you drive out of the regional town of Murwillumbah – 30 km from Byron Bay on the most eastern point of Australia on route to Mt Warning/Wollumbin- you cross a bridge at the junction of two rivers…. To the uninitiated of the local Aboriginal Bootheram [Dreaming], this bridge is just a blip on the map with lovely scenic vistas….but to the ancestral peoples, the Ngarakbal Githabal, this is a site of great spiritual and historical significance.

Byangum is the meeting place of the incoming [Salt] & outgoing [Fresh] waters systems, and it is here at Byangum that the river splits into the South & Main arms of the Tweed Valley Caldera and encircles and protects the central sacred complex of Wollumbin…Water is sacred to the people and has significant meaning within their ‘Skin Lore’ kinship systems. Its sacredness permeates all….It comes from the ancient Lore of the Rainbow Serpent…The Ngarakbal Githabal are descendants of the ancestral Carpet-snake clans of the Feathered Serpent Traditions of Australia…

Byangum was mapped as the original settlement for the area but was abandoned and the site of the town was moved further down river

Byangum was the natural Tidal Limit before the construction of the Bray Park weir a few kilometers down river in the 1960’s….Crown surveyor, Alan Cunningham had sailed his surveying vessel up to Byangum, in 1828 to “chart the interior in order to find a suitable fresh water site for the crown to establish a settlement”…A settlement was established and mapped for future development, but later abandoned, and the town now known as Murwillumbah was relocated and established several miles downriver.

The Ngarakbal Githabal traditional name for the place Byangum is ‘Ngungumth’, but Byangum was the nearest the white man could get to pronouncing it…and for them, in accordance with tradition, lore and custom, this place is also the name of the tribal custodian of the djurebil [sacred site] that is located there ….and a custodian of a djurebil has important responsibilities to their site…they MUST protect it…Custodian Rights and Responsibilities are never self-professed. They are inherited thru the kinship ‘Skin’ totemic descent of the Lore, Language and Land that the djurebil is located in…This occurs throughout the continent…

As you drive across the bridge at Ngungumth [Byangum] above it is a Sphinx-like Mountain…This mountains traditional name was ‘Moolumbah’….and to the Ngarakbal and Githabal it is, traditionally, the face of a significant Buloogan or Warrior/Sage who faces to the East’, towards the rising sun…

Buloogan is a descriptive title. It is not the name of the Warrior Sage ….This Buloogan has several names – Burrigan or Durrigan or Durramulan are just some of ‘his’ names…. and there are other mountains named after him as he ‘walks’ through the landscape…and He has many Bootheram [Dreaming Lores] about his journeys… He teaches Lore and values to the people, and as he walks he sings, and he also carries a long vine[plant]…He is a powerful ‘Weeun’ [clever fella/spirit ancestor] his songs create and his vine makes the land….His story is an important facet of the Bootheram [Dreaming] which links to all the other ancestral Creation Spirits journeys…and in each respective country a custodian is responsible for ‘His’ djurebil in accordance with the Lore, Language and Land its located….each custodian holds the respective songs and ceremonies of the Buloogan’s journey…and together [each portion in each ‘country’ combine] to make the ‘songline’…

Buloogan travels all over the land…His name changes with every new ‘country’ he enters, with every language that fills the ancient continent of Australia…..In this portion of his many journeys He is traveling from the coast [Byron Bay-Brunswick] to Byangum, where he faces east towards the rising sky….This place is in Ngarakbal ‘country’, in the Wollumbin volcano, and then, He travels inland to the Githabal volcano…and then on- on his many journeys through the respective countries….all the while singing and teaching as he travels…He is a Culture Hero….a Sky Ancestor Hero, from the Dreamtime – Bootheram….from the Feathered Serpent Traditions

He has many mountains and planes…The land tells us his story..The land IS his story, and so too does the night sky….In the Ngarakbal portion of his journey one of his mountains was gazetted as Hatton’s Bluff by the crown – named for the Wollumbin Post Office Master, Mr. Hatton of Byangum Village in the Wollumbin Parish – the site the crown had originally selected as a suitable location to build the town of Murwillumbah, which was the nearest the white man could get to pronouncing the ancestral dialect name of Moolumbah….It’s a beautiful place in the foothills of Mount Warning/Wollumbin…. A significant location to the ancestral peoples Lore, as given to them by the Sky Ancestors….Junction of two rivers encircling the central djurebil… ‘Meeting place of the waters’…Salt and Fresh…It is also the site of a battle between Ngarakbal warriors and invading settlers…The ‘last stand’ of resistance against the guns to uphold the traditions of the ancestor, Buloogan’s ‘djurebil’ from decimation and theft by the colonial invaders.

Some Background History….

By the early 1860’s English Squatters occupied some 3,000 squares miles of the ancestral aboriginal estates from the Macpherson Ranges in the north to the Clarence River in the south…the title ‘Squatter’ is exactly as it implies – an illegal occupant [of owned property]…..They, the Squatters, took the lands by force…Guns verses Spears….Guns won, of course

Around 1862 the first selectors [prospective farmers] who were, according to the crown legally entitled to occupy and later buy freehold land whether it was being occupied by either squatters, ancestral peoples, or not, began to move into the district….so by 1862 the Ngarakbal Githabal lands were under a second wave of siege…the first had been from Moreton Bay Penal Colony days [commencing 1824] but that’s another chapter so I won’t digress…I’ll just say that was the most brutal time of the invasion…

Anyway…..Joshua Bray was a Squatter who arrived in the Ngarakbal ancestral estate in 1863. He had relocated from the Brungle Run, in Tumut, which are the ancestral lands of the Ngarigu people that had been taken by force as part of the invasion process of the crown. Tumut is approx. 1500km south of the Tweed …..

James Bray and his wife Isobella

Joshua brought with him Native Police from the south….The standard formula of the invasion process was simple – set a black man against a black man – give him a uniform, a horse, arm him, pay him with tobacco and alcohol [the currency in those times] and give him right of access to women of the defeated…pillage and rape… an effective ‘tool’ of war against the ancestral people that has been used by the crown throughout its global career….

During the 1860’s large areas had been declared and gazetted as Forest Reserves and had been the domain of Timber getters harvesting the rare rainforest timbers for export back to England…I’m leaving out a whole chunk of information here about the penal colonies and the battles of the ancestral people to hold their lands…but, by 1887 much of the Tweed Richmond had been resumed and gazetted as the Tweed Richmond Gold Fields…now, a lot of people don’t realise that the Native Police force were also responsible for policing the gold fields throughout the east coast colonies – It goes back to the Eureka Stockade days in the Victorian Gold Fields….and as the crown wasn’t [isn’t] in the habit of keeping records, today the government still refuse to recognise any form of battle ever took place at all [which is a fallacy] ….According to the crowns accredited history books they were welcomed into the country and the ancestral people happily gave them all their lands and peaceful relocated to Reserves…mmmmm.

Anyway, Joshua Bray was the first Police Magistrate in Ngarakbal ‘country’ [arriving 1863] and commander of the Native Police force – He established the Kynnumboon Post Office [whilst a ‘squatter’] – He was a Justice of the Peace, the Coroner, the Gold Mining Warden, and, after his brother James left the district for another appointment, Joshua also became the Crown Land Agent….He had guns and crown instructions…basically it was, take the Ngarakbal lands and prepare a settlement for first settler selector arrivals and then sell the land to them for the crown…and presumably, destroy all records of battles, then sit back and take his place as a founding father of the Tweed confident that His-story would look after him….

Before invasion the lush landscape of the Ngarakbal Githabal supported several thousand people in the ancestral tribes….each tribe was a family clan…and it had been their home for thousands and thousands of years…

In 1882 the newly formed Aborigines Protection Board – facilitated by the police- conducted a census of Aboriginal people in NSW…….”On the Tweed River a population of one hundred and nine Aboriginal people is stated in the Aborigines Protection Board Report – these people are divided into two classifications with 97 Aboriginal, [in subsequent census identified as ‘full-bloods’], and 12 half-castes”. [Reibe 2001:52]

The 1885-86 records of Joshua Bray’s census team show 90 adults and 52 children for Tweed & Brunswick & Grafton areas….

By 1886 The NSW Aborigines Protection Board Report shows NONE in Tweed, with only two adults at Ballina and two adults in Lismore, and a state decrease of 146 males, 63 females and 260 children…total of 469 full blood deaths in one year…..

Many epic battles had been fought between the crown invaders and the Ngarakbal between first contact and 1890 – and these are in the oral traditions still …That the crown stealthily didn’t keep the records of the slaughters is classic tactical His-story sanitisation, and by 1887 most of the surviving Ngarakbal people had been placed into the Brunswick Reserve at Byron bay – Administrated by the police under the dubious title of the Aborigines Protection Board… From this reserve the survivors were systematically relocated out of their ancestral area into Barambah settlement in SE Qld…A few remnant survivors had found survival amongst the first White settlers, and some had gainful employment as postal workers, which afforded a small level of liberty to remain in their ancestral land, and the ability to move between settlements established by the invaders…and one of those postal workers was a Ngarakbal man named Johnny Brown…

So…..Let’s review….

In 1866 James Bray left Tumut … He and his family travel to the Tweed. For his ‘special services’, as a ‘Special Constable’, James received the appointment of Crown Land Agent at the Tweed and soon afterwards was also appointed Clerk of Petty Sessions. Whilst he was building a house at Dunbible Creek [near Stokers Siding- onroute to Byangum] his family stayed at Coolamon with the Gray’s [now Murwillumbah – the relocated settlement] …Whilst still at Dunbible he selected 300 acres of land across the creek and facing the Tweed River in the name of his daughter Lucy….. As Government Land Agent he could not select in his own name…..This land was what is now Byangum, or Ngungumth, a djurebil, and traditionally the place of a significant Buloogan or Warrior/Sage who faces to the East’, towards the rising sun…who sings the landscape and carries a vine….and it was also the crowns first choice of a settlement, beneath ‘Moolumbah’…

Well…imagine how outraged any ancestral person would be about such a significant site being stolen…imagine if your property was stolen…would you fight?…well the Ngarakbal fought…as depleted as they were, with all their kin incarcerated in Reserves…the remaining small remnant in the ancestral lands rallied a resistance to hold their Lore djurebil site of the Baloogun…and as fate would have it, despite crown orders to destroy all records of battles, James Bray did have at least one recorded instance of this altercation with the ancestral Aboriginal people…

It was Sunday September 16th 1866, just a few months after Joshua Bray’s arrival in Ngarakbal lands .

“Blacks away all day until late in the evening when they returned I got Bony & Jimmy to accompany me to Coolamon – to put my horses over by high tide on Monday morning. When I got over H.Clarke said my place was not safe as the Tyalgum Blacks had left their Gins up there and that meant mischief. So I had a cup of tea at half past seven p.m. and got ready to return at once accompanied by Clarke. When we got to the camp the Blacks immediately ran away & swam the river….We then made all haste to Skinners and made our way through the brush on the middle arm. We succeeded ‘Thank God’ in reaching the boat before the Blacks – made our way home to Dunbible and surprised the camp – making Wollumbin Johnny prisoner -& to our surprise discovered next morning that they had planted in the scrub in close proximity to the main camp – the following grim warriors – Jacky Bundash- Big Jimmy – Jimmy Kelly or Scrammy Kelly – Wigam – Monday – Big Billy – Dickin – Charley- [and two or three names unknown] – the names of my own Blacks who were implicated in the plot were Jacky Merrylegs – Bony- Pointer- Jimmy Crow- Jimmy or Talgemma- Bob & Wallumbin Johnny.

I kept Wallumbin chained up until Monday morning and then threatened to shoot him – he then revealed a portion of the plot, that they intended murder but it was a black to be the victim – so I let him go- tho’ I was convinced that he was telling a lie – but I had no proof against him” ….James Bray

By 1879 there were six appointed Magistrates to operate the Police Districts of Cudgen; Murwillumbah; Tweed and Brunswick…….They were Joshua Bray, Thomas Robinson, W.Hindmarsh, George Nixon, Frank Nixon and James Pringle…….At this time the Tweed District included Byron shire

James Rowland, pictured, left, with ‘his’ Aborigines was a half-brother of Joshua & James Bray. Rowland also selected his lands at Byangum on the pathway from Brunswick . He was enumerator of the Aboriginal Census for Brunswick in 1871 – The number James Rowland registered was 70 [Ngarakbal Githabal descendants] …James Bray in a letter to the Register General wrote

..”He has to take a guide [black] and go across the mountains, a great part of the distance being dense scrub through which they must cut their road…”… he used a guide to get to Byangum, and hence the name Rowlands Creek, at UKI today, near Mt Warning on route to Byangum – The guide following an ancient pathway of the Sky Ancestor Baloogan – Burrigan, Durramulan or Durrigan, the Warrior Sage who carried a vine and taught the people Lore…

Because of his resistance Johnny Brown was relocated to the Brunswick Reserve. His descendants had already been incarcerated there. Because of his crimes against the crown, they sent him north to Purga Reserve, and then on to Barambah Labour Camp in south east qld…from there he was sent east to the policed labour camps on the Sunshine Coast – 500kms from his family and his ancestral homelands…Johnny Brown – along with his enslaved kinsmen, had rallied to uphold Baloogan’s durebil against all odds…he gave this song to his surviving family….It was related by his Granddaughter, Charlotte, in the 1950,s as her part in the Civil Rights campaigns to recognize Aboriginal people as legally being human, and not Flora and Fauna as the crown had so cruelly classified aboriginal people in those times….He is singing for the loss of his djurebil…His Culture, His Land, His life

The Song of the Vine….related by Charlotte Williams [nee Brown] Gullival tribe – Ngarakbal Githabal Moiety…

“There was a vine whose spirit was a man.

These forest vines’, they were the Spirit peoples vines.

They were not made by men.

And someone cut this vine, and there this man is struggling to be alive.

This is my own grandfathers song.

“I am here”, the songs say’s…”I am this vine”…

“My life is going away from me, from this ground”

“This place, this dust. My ears are ringing”

“Gaungun the spirit woman is making my ears no good”

“My ears are ringing. I’ll never see this world no more”

And one man came along and saw this vine struggling to be alive. He covered it with dust. When I think of my old people, how they would sit down and sing their songs to me, I could cry…”.

Rest assured…despite the best efforts of authoritarian systems Johnny’s descendants survived and so did their Bootheram Lore, just as it has done throughout time….

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